AV News 174 - November 2008
Howard Bagshaw
Stafford AV Group
Two for the price of one! Buy one, get one free!
When I invited John Smith to talk to the Staffordshire AV group, we discussed
the possibility of Jill K Bunting coming along as well so they could do a
'double act', Jill on visuals and John on audio. After all, they were soon to be
the 'double act' editing this AV News! I think that our group would have been
delighted with either speaker, but the prospect of two excellent AV workers
coming to talk to us was fantastic.
Then my concerns started. Not about the speakers I hasten to add, but the
fact that they are booked for 16th July, the height of summer, holidays,
barbeques and sipping Pimm's under the shade of the lilac tree (we do that
sort of thing in Staffordshire you know). As a group we had decided to run
monthly meetings throughout the year, but attendance in May and June had
been low, at around 15. Would we get a better attendance in July to warrant
John travelling from Rochdale and Jill from North Wales?
I sent out an e-mail to remind all the members, nearly 30 now, and gave
them a potted CV of John and Jill’s work. I got one or two e-mails back,
“…yes we’ll be there...”, “...looking forward to the meeting…”, but also
“…sorry, can’t make it…”. Nothing else I can do now, just keep my fingers
crossed.
Chatting over a meal before the meeting, it was apparent that the group
weren't going to get a "take it or leave it" lecture, but Jill and John wanted to
make sure that they responded to the needs of the group, at an appropriate
level. Easier said than done, like most groups we have a very mixed
experience audience, though many are at the 'slide show' stage of
sequences rather than 'audio visual' stage (I expect you know what I mean).
OK, set up time. To make sure that we had enough computer power to do
justice to the animations in Jill's AV sequences, we set up a desktop
computer rather than laptop. All OK so far, but then, panic, no sound! Silly
me, plugged into the wrong sound card socket, I do wish that they'd label the
sockets better, even if you can see the symbols, what do they mean?
Page 34